Women Who Flirt, Um, Negotiate, At Work Are More Successful

Yet another social science study tells women what we already know – being flirtatious gets us further faster than acting all tough and macho around the office.

The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the London School of Economics “found that flirtation . . . conveys assertiveness and power, from someone who is also concerned about satisfying their own interests,” and that combination led to 20% improvements in the deals negotiated by study participants.

But Don’t Be Too Friendly

Flirting, warned the researchers, is not the same as friendliness and warmth, behavior that can get you marked as a chump who doesn’t know your own value.

The perfect mix, say the academics, “combines warmth, friendliness, and affiliation with flirtation, including playfulness, flattery, and sexiness.” They direct our attention to Joan Holloway from Mad Men as an effective deployer of the flirtatious weapon of mass destruct . . . uh . . . influence.

Do You Need to Be Young and Beautiful?

I’ve taught beginning deposition skills for more than fifteen years for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and I always give the women the option of flirting their way to the information they need.

Listen, I was never a beautiful woman. Doesn’t matter. At the risk of offending my few male readers – men are chumps for flattery. You can flirt your backside off at 60 (yes, I’m 60) and get what you want. My mother – god bless her – is 88 and she has, count ‘em – three men who drive her to the store and doctor appointments, fix her small appliances, and take care of her pool and her yard.

Mom – also not a raving beauty by beauty magazine standards – is a survivor. And a female survivor of the “Great Generation” primarily needed to know how to get and keep a man. I rejected her example for decades. It just so happened that I love men and love to flirt – passions that just happen to work in the workplace.

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Flirting takes many forms, but the core of all flirting is the hope that it raises in the man.

The hope that we are as attractive as we would like to be (talk about the triumph of hope over experience); the hope that we will be given some joy; the hope that somehow we will be enhanced by or benefit from the encounter.

Men are suckers and (almost) invariably fall for a good flirt.

But. Expectations are raised.

To be truly effective, a woman has to be just as good at managing those expectations downwards as she is at raising that hope in the first place.

If those expectations are not managed properly, there is often a backlash (“Hell has no fury like a man disappointed” – sorry Congreve).

The men most susceptible to a good flirt are those with big egos, lonely men, unhappy men and needy men. They are the same men who will be most disappointed if those expectations are dashed.

Have you ever gossiped with a man who described a woman co-worker as manipulative, a P.T., or worse? Often the result of disappointed expectations.

Can’t quantify it, but my guess is that the cost of making a hidden enemy is at least as high as the benefit gained from flirting.

Humor, honesty, compassion go a long way in managing male expectations.

No question that one must manage expectations. This is a social skill that women learn pretty early in life. Those who don’t, tend to shut down their sexuality when dealing with men and for those women that’s probably the best way to go. Our sexuality is as much a part of us as our sense of humor or our conversational style. Being flirtatious with one another in the office has never been the problem. People who are unable to read other people and adjust their behavior accordingly is the problem and that problem arises whether it’s in response to flirtatious behavior or casual conversation. Successful people are more interested in others than they are in themselves, treat others with respect, and never step over other people’s boundaries. When they do, sometimes, inadvertently intrude, adults should be capable of saying, “hey, that’s a little intrusive” and move on with their day.

It’s not to examine ourselves as a culture and better understand why this gender imbalance is socially acceptable?

This ridiculousness sounds like 1950s “how to find a husband” advice: “The good news, of course, is that men are pretty easy to fool when it comes to your interest in them.” “This is recognizing the desires of your fellows and caring deeply enough about them to find what is beautiful and compliment (and complement) it.”

This is really just likability. All of the men I know who are great business generators are extremely likable. They like men and they like women. Men like them and women like them. Understanding the gender imbalance is important and something we talk about here often. Perhaps I find “flirt successfully” unoffensive because, as an advocate, I’d do just about anything other than something unethical to forward my clients’ interests. If the Judge is a sexist pig, I dress more girly. If she’s a ball buster, I bust back or bare my soft underbelly to let her know I’m not a threat. I read people – Judges, juries, opposing counsel, clients – to find what I believe is the best way to relate to them and they to me. This can sound terribly Machiavellian, but if you “recognize the desires of your fellows and care deeply enough about them to find what is beautiful and compliment (and complement) it” you’re actually answering to your higher angels, not your lower nature.

I’ve read and appreciated most of what you’ve written, Victoria. But this is a bit schizophrenic. Either women get to be who they are, negotiate on that basis and not constantly be told to shapeshift in order to be valued properly (which is how men act and negotiate) or they’re not.

Is one’s value and success at negotiating supposed to be based on qualifications or ego boosting? To say that women need to flirt implies that men won’t accept them as colleagues equal to men. Men don’t flirt with each other. Women shouldn’t be expected to snap towels with them in the loker room, either.

I was coaching someone who was about to go into an interview on this very skill of reading people. I find it is a key to interviewing well – understanding what the interviewer wants to hear and tailoring your responses accordingly. This ‘change of face’ is explained brilliantly in Michael Crighton’s book “Rising Sun”.

I think the concern I have with this article is that you are referencing this crucial skill as flirting vs appealing to their needs. Would you say men are flirting when they do this?